Skepticism

EVENTS

Huckabee heaven

As many of the readers here know, one of the most common criticisms of us uppity atheists is the idea that the religion we critize doesn’t exist: that the true power of faith is thoughtful, intelligent, and deep, and plucking out random weird beliefs isn’t really representative. When I hear that (and I have, often), I just have to roll my eyes and give the apologist a scathing look — if they believe naive god-wallopers weren’t the dominant form of religious belief on the planet, then I can at least castigate the self-declared ‘sophisticated’ theology for being an exercise in willful blindness.

But here’s another case. This is a presidential candidate. He has an audience eating out of his hand with his speech on how much he looooooooooves his guns, how the UN should float away, and other fodder for wingnuts. And of course, with gun love comes the love of Christ.

“watching ducks land on a lake in Arkansas in the winter is about the closest to Heaven as you can find on this earth… and as someone who believes, according to my faith, I will go to Heaven when I die, I am pretty sure that there is duck hunting in Heaven!”

Pretty deep thinking there from Mike Huckabee. Shallow, stupid git. But that is what American religion is: wish-fulfillment for the gullible.

Besides, as everyone knows, there is duck hunting in heaven. Every day is opening day, and when the Great Mallard opens his bill and quacks the signal, all of the ducks start hunting … hunting the souls of expired ‘sportsmen’.

Yeah, and here’s the other thing: that brand of Christianity that Elaine Pagels delights in telling us doesn’t exist? The one purported by atheists to be headed by Pat Robertson and backed by millions of followers? Surely, if such a thing did exist, it would have vast resources at its disposal.

So, Google this: “Pat Robertson Charles Taylor”, and have your barf bag handy. Funny how all of that managed to happen, even though there aren’t (according to the wankers apologists) really that many supporters of Robertson out there.

Hold on a second there, PZ. I’m not going to just let you dismiss our right to self defense by bundling it up with creationism and superstition.

When we overthrew our German king (George III, the Hanoverian nutcase), we did so with our privately owned arms, and we did so against the king’s ostensibly divine authority.

The fact is that governments have a different set of options available to them when the population is armed, than when the population is disarmed. The one thing that Mao was right about was when he said that all political power comes from the barrel of a gun. In this country, we reserve that power to the people, and rightly so.

Gee, guns are neat. I don’t think we should dismiss our right to self defense and private arsenals by bundling it with a love of gunning down students on a university campus, either. Those are really two distinct issues.

Anyway, JCR makes a good point. It’s a rare thing indeed that massacres and bunker incidents are carried out by religious loonies. There’s really no link whatsoever between being a fundamentalist nutter and digging in against the federal government for a good old fashioned, All-American shootout.

Yes, how could it be heaven unless true believers like Huckabee don’t get to blast ducks into bloody shreds each day? (And since it’s heaven, no doubt the ducks will be resurrected during the intervals between hunts so that they can be dispatched again.)

Note to jcr: There is a difference between being a gun nut and being a responsible armed citizen. The former fetishizes his big bang-bangs and feeds on paranoia. The latter keeps his weapons secure, practices gun safety, and doesn’t think the Second Amendment requires him to join a right-wing paramilitary group. Huckabee sounds like he’s pandering to the former. And I didn’t see PZ say anything denying the right to self defense.

Yeah it kind of bothers me to see both hunting and guns mixed in with religion and wingnuttery by people on either side.

Hunting is an ecologically justifiable tradition, and it’s one of several good uses for guns. Another is the calming effect of a large gun when you’re fishing and a grizzly bear pops out of the brush on the other side of the stream.

It’s OK for an enlightened liberal to like both guns and hunting in moderation. We can be generally for both while still opposing the NRA’s crusade for the right to hunt endangered owls with howitzers.

jcr, do you really think it’s gun ownership that prevents our government from becoming despotic? If that were true, the UK would be a totalitarian fascist state by now. Last I looked, the fact that we can buy guns hasn’t stopped the Bush Administration from stepping on more of our civil liberties than any previous administration has done.

I’ll answer it. It’s a passive, socially accepted form of barbarism. Different from getting a rise out of shooting helpless creatures, but barbarism nonetheless. Humans are not obligate carnivores, so a choice is involved, and the vast majority of meat-eaters prefer not to think about where it came from or how it was obtained.

No, I guess he didn’t. He dismissed it as being unrelated to what he was talking about. Don’t turn this into another “WHO WILL FIGHT MAJEFF?!?!!” thread. At least not until you come back with a Boris Vallejo rendering of yourself in the “king of the mountain” style.

John C. Randolph: When we overthrew our German king (George III, the Hanoverian nutcase), we did so with our privately owned arms, and we did so against the king’s ostensibly divine authority.

Most of said weapons (and about 90% of the gunpowder used therein) having been the “private property” of the divinely ordained French King Louis XVI, whose navy also obligated the decisive surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown.

Does he realize he sounds like a seven year old? I am pretty sure there is candy in Heaven!

Instead of the more “sophisticated” theologians who think that Heaven is being in the presence of God, most Americans do follow this materialistic idea of what Heaven is. I’ve even had a pastor tell me that Heaven is different for everyone, because everyone likes different things. I was just surprised that Heaven consisted of “things.”

I always wanted to know if my beloved cat (who died when I was 5) went to heaven. Now I know the truth… he stands as an eternal guardian between the world of dreams and reality, eternally vigilant against the quivering otherworldly blasphemies which dwell beyond the doors of sleep, and against the cats from Saturn.

he stands as an eternal guardian between the world of dreams and reality, eternally vigilant against the quivering otherworldly blasphemies which dwell beyond the doors of sleep, and against the cats from Saturn.

I’ve trained my dogs to protect me from the Fungi from Yuggoth, and it seems to have worked so far…

There is something fundamentally barbaric in making a sport out of killing.

Spoken like someone whose only knowledge of hunting comes from watching Jimbo on South Park.

I hope you’re a vegetarian, because it is tremendously hypocritical for anyone to criticize the harvesting of wild game while eating meat from animals raised for slaughter in captivity and then clubbed over the head by their caregivers.

If you are a vegetarian who believes we should all cease millions of years of omnivory because Bambi is cute, then you may not be hypocritical but you’re still completely wrong. The main thing you and other anti-hunters don’t understand is that the sport of hunting is not about the kill. It’s about getting closer to nature, learning the habits and defenses of the quarry, and matching your wits not against the animal but against nature’s power to sharpen a creature’s senses and instincts for surviving on its home turf. Serious hunting gives one a type of powerfully respectful perspective on nature which can’t be understood without feeling it for yourself. And, for those of us who prefer all-natural protein over the various forms of soy rubber, hunting is the most ethical way to acquire it.

If you’re serious about understanding hunting, rather than degrading it without a clue, then go out with a camera *during hunting season* and try to snap a picture of a big game animal you could have legally and reliably shot with a gun — generally standing still, within 100 yards of you, with a clear line of sight to the heart/lung area. And you can’t do this from a road. If you go out and give this a try you’ll begin to respect our sport.

Hunting is an ecologically justifiable tradition, and it’s one of several good uses for guns.

I agree and even though I don’t believe in heaven, I do believe that even a fairy tale heaven couldn’t be much better than a good duck shoot. Just another few weeks and I’ll be in Alberta on the annual harvest to stalk the freezer with healthy, tasty wild game. What joy.

Another ridiculous anti-hunter term is “defenseless animal.” An embryo is a defenseless animal. A deer has superhuman senses of smell, sight, and hearing, it can run twice as fast as an Olympic sprinter, it’s camouflaged with its surroundings, it’s extremely paranoid about predators in the wild during hunting season, and it’s often found in groups which effectively give it several sets of superhuman eyes and ears and noses. And that’s one of the easiest big game animals to hunt.

Okay Jason, why exactly IS it barbaric to take pleasure in obtaining sustenance and clothing (for all the varmint hunters and trappers out there) for one’s self and family? Elucidate on this matter, please. This rube wants to know. Having heard statements like this quite a lot since moving to a city, I have yet to recieve a rational explanation as to why such thicgs are “barbaric”.

I always wanted to know if my beloved cat (who died when I was 5) went to heaven.

My high-school theology teacher (catholic) said that according to the catechism, animals didn’t have immortal souls and, as such, didn’t go to heaven. After telling us this, she literally started weeping at the thought of not being reunited with her dead kitties in the afterlife.

Okay Jason, why exactly IS it barbaric to take pleasure in obtaining sustenance and clothing

I don’t know why you’re asking me that. I didn’t say it was barbaric to do that. Try reading my post again, more carefully this time. I would be most interested to know why you think it is not barbaric to stalk and kill animals for pleasure, if that is indeed your position.

Have you priced ammunition lately? Between all the rounds shot up in the Iraq occupation and the Cbinese quest to buy up as much lead and copper as possible, even U.S. police departments complain that they have trouble finding & affording ammo. Republican policies have contributed to this shortage, but for some reason the NRA types who tend to vote Republican haven’t complained about this creeping disarmament of the American population.

BTW, don’t gun nuts remind you of pagan idolators? They boast about their firearms’ powers and how they protect them from harm. They clean them up and put them on display in their homes like houseold idols. They even denigrate other gun nuts’ firearms like lesser or false deities.

Spoken like someone whose only knowledge of hunting comes from watching Jimbo on South Park.

Again, please explain to me why you think terrorizing and killing animals for fun is ethically defensible. I really want to know.

The main thing you and other anti-hunters don’t understand is that the sport of hunting is not about the kill. It’s about getting closer to nature, learning the habits and defenses of the quarry, and matching your wits not against the animal but against nature’s power to sharpen a creature’s senses and instincts for surviving on its home turf.

Ha ha ha ha ha. If it’s “not about the kill,” then stop the killing. If it’s about “getting closer to nature” and understanding the senses and instincts of animals, then try STUDYING them rather than terrorizing and killing them. You’re in such denial.

On an unrelated note, the fondness of christians for armament seems to go back quite a way:
“Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.”
-Luke 22:36, Jesus speaking
And:
“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.”
Matthew 10:34, The Big J talking again

Of course guns had not yet been invented,and no mention is made of ducks…

I would be most interested to know why you think it is not barbaric to stalk and kill animals for pleasure, if that is indeed your position.

Then you’re really fighting a strawman. No hunter I know stalks and kills animals for pleasure without using the meat and/or fur and feathers. Here in Alaska it’s highly illegal and socially taboo. There are strict laws about salvaging all usable meat (and, for some species, fur) from animals you shoot, and steep penalties if you break those laws. Most states have similar (though less strict) laws against waste.

Hunters take pleasure in the killing. Which in modern society is completely unnecessary.

Ah, the brain-dead overgeneralization, applied to an entire group of millions of people.

Who the hell are you to tell me what I take pleasure in? You have no clue (if that wasn’t already obvious to the objective reader). I’m not a vegetarian/vegan nor have any desire or reason to be. Providng myself and my family with wild game I hunted is a sufficent, justifiable, and rational reason all on its own.

My high-school theology teacher (catholic) said that according to the catechism, animals didn’t have immortal souls and, as such, didn’t go to heaven. After telling us this, she literally started weeping at the thought of not being reunited with her dead kitties in the afterlife.

So, are these ducks very very good moral ducks who went to heaven? Are they immortal ducks who remain alive after being shot? Or are these mere duck-like simulacra that God created for the pleasure of Huckabee and the other hunters? The theological implications are staggering.

Then you’re really fighting a strawman. No hunter I know stalks and kills animals for pleasure without using the meat and/or fur and feathers.

As I said, terrorizing and killing animals for pleasure is barbaric whether you eat your victims (or use their skin) or not. Do please show me your evidence that American hunters make their clothes out of their victims’ skin. You’ve got to be kidding.

Whatever “barbarism” there is in hunting is actually the “barbarism” of the natural world. Some animals kill and eat other animals for survival. Humans are one of those animals. There is nothing barbaric about engaging in that perfectly natural activity any more than it’s “barbaric” to have to pass waste through our colons. You might find it distasteful, but projecting your revulsion onto others says more about you than it does them.

Okay: meat and fur sustain human life and comfort, and it strikes me as right and natural to take pleasure obtaining in such things.

You’re not listening. First, as a factual matter it is neither necessary nor healthy, economical or environmentally friendly for modern Americans to consume meat for nutrition or fur for clothing, regardless of its source.

But that’s completely beside the point, anyway. For about the fifth time, what is barbaric is TERRORIZING AND KILLING ANIMALS FOR PLEASURE. If you think you can ethically defend this practise, please try.

Some animals kill and eat other animals for survival. Humans are one of those animals. There is nothing barbaric about engaging in that perfectly natural activity

It also seems to be “perfectly natural” for human beings to make war, enslave outsiders, and subjugate minorities and women. You seriously believe that if some behavior is “natural” it is therefore also ethical, do you?

Jason, to consider it unethical for a human to kill and eat a deer, you must also find it unethical for a wolf (or any other animal) to kill and eat a deer. (Neither “terrorizes” the deer, but way to use substanceless, emotional words in your argument.)

Or is it just unethical if the wolf enjoys killing and eating the deer? Better if a wolf will eat a deer only after expressing its displeasure with the rest of the pack for having enjoyed the hunt so much, huh?

You’re not listening. First, as a factual matter it is neither necessary nor healthy, economical or environmentally friendly for modern Americans to consume meat for nutrition or fur for clothing, regardless of its source.

BS, your reasons are purely emotional, not rational. That’s more than obvious with your use of sweeping generalizations and the overly emotive terms you been shouting (e.g., “TERRORIZING AND KILLING ANIMALS FOR PLEASURE”).

Please cite actual scientific publications indicating meat is not healthy. And no PETA-based propaganda doesn’t count. That stuff is as crazy as creationist research.

If you think you can ethically defend this practise, please try.

Several already have, myself included, but apparently “You’re not listening.”

t also seems to be “perfectly natural” for human beings to make war, enslave outsiders, and subjugate minorities and women. You seriously believe that if some behavior is “natural” it is therefore also ethical, do you?

Are you equating animals to people now? Well, there’s your problem. You’re an anthropomorphizer.

Then you’re really fighting a strawman. No hunter I know stalks and kills animals for pleasure without using the meat and/or fur and feathers. Here in Alaska it’s highly illegal and socially taboo. There are strict laws about salvaging all usable meat (and, for some species, fur) from animals you shoot, and steep penalties if you break those laws. Most states have similar (though less strict) laws against waste.

If a hunter uses the fur and meat but hunts solely for the thrill of the kill and trophys, it’s still repugnant in my opinion.

Now, if a hunter does not laugh and gloat about his kills, but treats the prey as something to respect and even mourn then that hunter is one I can respect.

Dustin, your point is noted. But Jason has offered zero reasons why hunting should be consider unethical beyond the fact he doesn’t like it, and it would seem a large part of that is because he equates animals to people.

Jason, to consider it unethical for a human to kill and eat a deer, you must also find it unethical for a wolf (or any other animal) to kill and eat a deer.

I’m not sure why I’m bothering with you, but you obviously need a lesson in the nature of ethics. For an act to have an ethical character, the actor must be a moral agent. That is, he must have the ability to distinguish right from wrong and to act on that distinction. A wolf is not a moral agent, at least not in this sense, and it is therefore meaningless to characterize the act of a wolf hunting a deer as ethical or unethical. Human hunters are moral agents, and their acts therefore do have an ethical character.

(Neither “terrorizes” the deer, but way to use substanceless, emotional words in your argument.)

What do you mean, “substanceless?” Do you seriously think a deer being chased and shot at by a hunter is not traumatized by the experience? Ever been around an animal that has been beaten and abused by its owner?

I’m having issues here. If ducks go to heaven when they die, then when dead hunters hunt dead ducks, what happens when the birdshot hits the ducks? If the ducks are already dead, then they can’t be killed, so duckhunters in heaven would face an eternity of shooting at ducks without ever being able to bring one down — and that would be sheer hell for a hunter. Or does killing a dead duck in heaven bring a duck to life on the earth? Or do the dead killed in heaven go to hell? This is all very confusing.

For heaven to have duckhunting, then surely shotguns must go to heaven when they die, or the hunters would have to hunt ducks with their bare hands, or with thrown stones. I have no trouble with any of that. It’s the ammunition, frankly, that’s got me in a quandary. When a shotshell is fired, the ‘life’ of the round — the primer compound, the powder, the wads, and the birdshot — all leave the empty shell behind, so the shotshell is then dead. I accept that, no problem. However, if the fired round then goes to heaven, does it get reloaded there with fresh primers, powder, wads, and shot? If so, where does heaven get its reloading supplies from? If not, then the hunters would be hunting ducks with empty cartridges. They’d have to use the shotguns as clubs.

Does heaven have restrictions on lead shot? Over time, over billions of years of shotgunning in heaven, there would be quite an accumulation of lead dust, I would think. Or does heaven allow only copper-plated steel shot?

Can someone help me sort this out? I’d ask Huckabee himself, but he strikes me as dumb as dirt.

Hunters take pleasure in the killing. Which in modern society is completely unnecessary.

What about hunting a specific number of deer every year to control their population in the absence of natural predators?

I don’t hunt, but I do sometime enjoy the benefits of hunting (Grand-dad’s deer sausage, Yum!)

I do sometimes fish in a small man-made tank (yankees call them ponds, I think) that has been stocked in such that most of the fish are stunted from lack of food. The owners of the tank are trying to fix the problem by only keeping the smaller bass, throwing back the larger bass and all the prey fish (mostly perch). To me, killing the fish is the least pleasurable part of the act. But eating what I have killed helps me remember the price of meat-eating. The experience tends to make me want to conserve food resources, and eat less meat.

Also, it could be argued that every time a hunter eats what he kills, he foregoes eating meat raised by industrial agriculture. The meat industry is environmentally destructive, whereas wild game comes from undeveloped or reclaimed wild habitat.

Frankly, calling hunting “barbaric” seems to me to be a moral belief that is hard to justify. Does the pleasure you assume hunters are taking in killing outweigh the benefits? Once again, I am speaking of the licensed hunting of domestic game, as opposed to trophy hunting of apex predators or endangered species. I submit that the kind of hunting I am speaking of can be likened to the controlled burning of overgrown forests.

Finally, in the interest of full disclosure, I’ll mention that many of the hunters I know place deer feeders, which dispense grain, in designated areas in the off season. It can be argued that these feeders artificially inflate the deer population. However, the amount of grain provided is too small to be sustain a large herbavore. as I understand it the feeders are used to get the deer accustomed to coming to specific areas regularly. But even if the deer are getting most of their nourishment from the feeders, they are still living in undeveloped habitat

Barbarians had to kill to eat and clothe themselves…hence hunting even if you do bother to eat and sking and wear your catch IS barbaric.

How lame and pathetically weak. So, by your logic since Barbarians also had to defecate ergo all those who do so now are Barbarians?

I’m suprised you didn’t also include the other perjoratives like refering to us as Evilutionists. Oh, sorry that’s another class of tards that use that phrase when they really have no rational argument to offer.

As I said, terrorizing and killing animals for pleasure is barbaric whether you eat your victims (or use their skin) or not. Do please show me your evidence that American hunters make their clothes out of their victims’ skin. You’ve got to be kidding.

You haven’t actually explained WHY hunting is barbaric yet, have you? You just keep repeating it over and over and making up scary-sounding phrases to inaccurately replace the word “hunting.” That sounds an awful lot like what religious apologists do. Of course, that’s not surprising — animal rights extremism is one of the most scientifically unjustified, religion-like obsessions of the too-far left. Like religion, it is motivated by emotion and a lack of understanding of the natural world.

Humbert, I agree more with you than I do with Jason, but you aren’t making sense. Jason wasn’t equating people to animals. To the contrary, suggesting that human impulses and human emotional rewards are above criticism is to view humans as nothing more than creatures of instinct. He was pointing out that the fact that humans tend to naturally engage in a particular activity doesn’t make the activity good, not that hunting and war are the same (it would be rediculous to think so). Also, there’s this:

Jason, to consider it unethical for a human to kill and eat a deer, you must also find it unethical for a wolf (or any other animal) to kill and eat a deer.

If it read:

Jason, to consider it unethical for a human to kill and eat a human, you must also find it unethical for a wolf (or any other animal) to kill and eat a human.

we’d think it was nonsense. The difference isn’t even in the way we percieve human life, since we wouldn’t regard it as unethical for a bear to kill and eat a human. The difference is one of rational motive. Humans are nearly unique in their capacity for rational motive, and that’s Jason’s grounds for saying the practice is barbaric.

Gee PZ you can really rouse the rabble, I’m impressed.
Jason, you should consider typing less and thinking more, your arguments are littered with appeals to emotion, strawmen, and ad hominems – a poor showing.
As for ducks in heaven, what I want to know is this: among all those dirty little secrets and things we enjoy here, are they available? Can I have that “sailor’s weekend” in Bangkok while in heaven? Or do I need liberty to the *other* place to partake in those activities?

I see, so once humans attained consciousness (i.e. became moral agents), then the killing and eating of any species became immoral in your eyes. Of course, if humans had adopted such a moral system, we would never have flourished or possibly even survived to our current condition, making your beliefs a fascinating example of self-loathing.

But Jason has offered zero reasons why hunting should be consider unethical beyond the fact he doesn’t like it,

All ethical beliefs, both beliefs about how human beings ought to treat animals and beliefs about how human beings ought to treat other human beings, are ultimately derived from moral instincts or sentiments that cannot be shown to be true, so this is irrelevant. Why do you believe it is not unethical to terrorize a deer or a dog or a pig, if it is unethical to terrorize a human child?

I have to admit that I’ve never had the urge to go out hunting, but as somebody who enjoys meat, it would be kind of silly for me to look down on others for killing and eating animals. Frankly, I see it as comparable to my hobby of growing my own wild yeast starters and baking bread. You can pay somebody to do it for you, or you can hone and exercise a skill that has been integral to our society for thousands of years.

At the same time, I have to admit to being creeped out by people who participate in canned hunts. At that point it seems to me to be a creepy animal-killing fetish rather than an actual meaningful activity. There’s something about removing the hunting from hunting to turn it straight into “killing” that makes me question the stability of the people who do it. “I like hunting–except for the walking around an looking for animals part. I mainly just like blowing their heads off and leaving somebody else to clean up the mess,” just doesn’t strike me as a healthy attitude.

I consider taking pleasure in the act of inflicting suffering and death on a living creature to be barbaric. I assume you agree in cases where the prey is a human being. Why isn’t also barbaric if the prey is a deer or a pig?

I may be coming in late to the party, but I really want to jump in on this whole “hunting is terror” theme.

First, I am a liberal, animal-loving, non-gunowner who thinks that sport hunting is a good thing.

Predators, which would otherwise control the populations of many of the animals sport hunters choose for their quarry, have not been doing well over the last century. Sure, here in Minnesota, Montana and Wyoming the wolves have been making a comeback, but definitely not enough to control the booming deer populations.

Minnesota has had a big problem with overpopulation of deer; and many of them end up starving. I hardly see how that is any less terrifying for a deer than a quick one to the heart from 100 yards or from a tree stand. Another problem with overpopulation is that deer cross highways at inopportune times. People die, cars get totaled; it’s not a good thing.

Deer die many different ways; drowning while trying to cross rivers, gangrene from broken limbs, parasite infestations, etc. There is no good way for a deer to die.

Eating beef is okay, though. But I hardly see how being steered through a narrow shoot into a slaughterhouse after having been trucked hundreds of miles can be any more calming for a steer than being killed by a bullet from long range.

Hunters have been responsible for restoring habitats, especially wetlands, through Ducks Unlimited and Pheasants Forever which buy up land which would have otherwise been farmed. Judiciously, of course. Wetland restoration has many other positive benefits, one being a means to slow water rushing to the rivers at spring thaw. It has made a slight difference, but a positive one for all that.

Sport hunting is not barbaric, it serves a positive societal function you are able to look at it objectively. And, yes, many people I don’t really care for enjoy it. But then, there are some people I really like who are hunters. So there.

And to JCR; even if I had a howitzer in my apartment, if the black helicopters came for me with the jackboots who finally get serious about taking over my country, I wouldn’t be able to hold out long. The same people who want to protect our 2nd Amendment rights because of that reason are the ones who like a big peace-time military budget. The two concepts seem to be in opposition. I’m certainly not going to buy a pistol which would be more likely to be used against me in a robbery than work to defend me. A pistol wouldn’t help me in a “state of emergency” anyway.

I have to admit that I’ve never had the urge to go out hunting, but as somebody who enjoys meat, it would be kind of silly for me to look down on others for killing and eating animals. Frankly, I see it as comparable to my hobby of growing my own wild yeast starters and baking bread. You can pay somebody to do it for you, or you can hone and exercise a skill that has been integral to our society for thousands of years.

I grew up hunting but gave it up because i found walking fence-lines in cornfield dreadfully dull (pheasant hunting). I’m also not fond of the flavor of wild game. However, unless folks here critiquing the cruelty of hunting also do completely without meat (or animal products like gelatin in their foods), leather and the like, they do open themselves up to charges of hypocracy. Is a turkey who wanders into a glen and is shot and killed (not pursued) more “terrorized” than a cow who lives in factory farming conditions?

Are there problems? sure. I’d rather buy my meat from local organic producers than transnational corporations, for a number of reasons, having to do with transportation, farm conditions, and the like. The ethical issues are far more shades of gray than black and white. Just like life in general.

I hope you’re a vegetarian, because it is tremendously hypocritical for anyone to criticize the harvesting of wild game while eating meat from animals raised for slaughter in captivity and then clubbed over the head by their caregivers.

You kingdomist! What about all those poor plants raised for slaughter in captivity and then shreddingly beheaded or brutally ripped from the ground first.

I am pretty sure that there is duck hunting in Heaven!

For which he needs not only duck souls but presumably gun souls as well! Very bizarre for a bronze-age religionist (ie there were no guns back then and assigning some afterlife to guns suggests odd things about their current existence too). But much more likely to be an inadvertent admission that he expects his heaven to be an ongoing delusion.

I have to admit that I’ve never had the urge to go out hunting, but as somebody who enjoys meat, it would be kind of silly for me to look down on others for killing and eating animals. Frankly, I see it as comparable to my hobby of growing my own wild yeast starters and baking bread. You can pay somebody to do it for you, or you can hone and exercise a skill that has been integral to our society for thousands of years.

That’s it in a nutshell. Ducks taste gooooood. I’ll probably get into raising them, rather than hunting, because duck eggs are good too, and I can control their diets (no polluted retention pond scum for my Sunday night dinner, no sir). Quail and Quail eggs are both wonderful, too. Plus, well regulated fowl hunting isn’t going to have a bad ecological impact. Ecological impact is my number one concern with hunting. Actually, several hunters are beginning to jump on the environmental wagon now that they’ve realized that, after Halliburton razes the Rocky Mountains to the ground and pisses on their smoldering ashes, there won’t be any wildlife left.

I hope you never have occasion to need to defend yourself, but speaking as one who lives in a state where people have been rounded up and placed in concentration camps within living memory, I think I’d rather have something more than sarcasm to resort to should the need arise.

A gun is a vital item for emergency preparedness, as anyone from New Orleans, or any woman who’s ever had a stalker can tell you. Whether or not the police in your area are on the up-and-up, there’s simply no way they can protect you. All they can do is pursue a criminal after the fact. Leaving your safety and that of your neighbors entirely in the hands of the government is childish and irresponsible.

Being an outspoken Atheist myself, there’s a small but non-zero chance that some bible thumper or head chopper will decide to try to kill me for the greater glory of his superstition, and I and I alone will choose what preparations I will make to defend myself. Thanks to the foresight of the authors of the bill of rights, your approval is not required.

You’re another one whose ideas and arguments are just confused. Killing certain animals humanely for the purpose of controlling wild animal populations may be ethical (I stress the word “may”). I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about hunting for sport. Hunting for the purpose of deriving pleasure from the act of chasing down and killing a living thing. Try to understand the distinction. I realize that a particular act of hunting may serve both to gratify the bloodlust of the hunter and to help manage a wild game population, but that doesn’t make the bloodlust any less barbaric. And in fact I think that in the vast majority of cases of modern American hunting, it’s the bloodlust that motivates the hunter, the thrill of chasing down and killing something, not any kind of serious environmental or ecological concern. That’s just the way they rationalize it to try and make themselves feel better about killing things for fun.

Hunters have been responsible for restoring habitats, especially wetlands, through Ducks Unlimited and Pheasants Forever which buy up land which would have otherwise been farmed. Judiciously, of course. Wetland restoration has many other positive benefits, one being a means to slow water rushing to the rivers at spring thaw. It has made a slight difference, but a positive one for all that.

I alluded to this earlier, but it is important to emphasize. Wild game is raised on undeveloped wild habitat. Beef, chicken, and is raised in an unsustainable (and often inhumane) manner on cleared/deforested land. To the rural poor and middle class, who make up the majority of hunters in America, wild game is an important source of nutrition. Store bought protein, including the vegetarian variety, is expensive. Shows where rich hunters use state-of-the-art equipment to hunt on private game resorts provide a misleading image of hunting in America (Canada included).

“jcr, do you really think it’s gun ownership that prevents our government from becoming despotic? ”

It’s not the sole deterrent to tyranny of course, but there have been several times when an armed population served to check the power of federal, state and local governments in the USA. Two examples spring to mind: when the US Army, intent on enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act was met at the border of Vermont by the Vermont militia, who told the soldiers to go home (which they did), and the FBI, intent on imprisoning Japanese-American workers in Montana, who found themselves staring down the barrels of the Montana ranchers’ shotguns.

Frankly, I think an armed confrontation between medical marijuana growers and the federal thugs who harass them might be a good thing.

Like some of the other commenters here, I am deeply concerned about the heavenly ducks that Huckabee is looking forward to shooting after he is dead. People have wondered whether the heavenly ducks are the after-life manifestations of ducks who died after living good lives on earth. Or might they be wicked ducks whose punishment is to serve as targets of heavenly sport?

I think the theologically trained comedy writers who work for The Simpsons may have come up with the answer. In the episode where Marge has a vision of Homer and Bart in Catholic heaven, Homer gets beaned with a bat during a piñata party and discovers that it feels good — so he bashes himself a few more times. I think we can posit that ducks who serve as prey in the after-life must enjoy the experience of being shot full of lead. [Link]

That sets my mind at ease, as sound theological reasoning is wont to do.

I consider taking pleasure in the act of inflicting suffering and death on a living creature to be barbaric. I assume you agree in cases where the prey is a human being. Why isn’t also barbaric if the prey is a deer or a pig?

Nobody takes pleasure in inflicting suffering. That’s why ethical hunters are very careful to minimize it. Being killed by a good hunter involves much less suffering than pretty much any other way a wild animal can die. It’s usually instant or near-instant death. Even if it takes several minutes, it’s a good way to go compared dying of disease or starving in the winter or being brought down by a pack of wolves.

We also don’t take pleasure in the death. We take pleasure in the pursuit, and in providing for ourselves with healthy, eco-friendly meat. The death is just a necessary step in the middle. Most of my best hunting memories are actually from hunts that didn’t result in a kill.

It’s wrong to kill other human beings because humans are — from the human viewpoint — more important than other animals. From an objective viewpoint, humans are more self-aware and intelligent.

If you want to argue that we should view all animals equally, then you’re drawing an awfully arbitrary line. Why treat animals equally but not show the same respect to plants and fungi? Who are you to end a mushroom’s life or rip apart a head of lettuce and eat it while it’s still alive? How do you justify trampling on a zucchini plant’s reproductive rights by eating all its fruit? The point is that a line must be drawn below which organisms are acceptable as food and above which they should be protected. Hunters very reasonably draw that line at higher brain function unique to humans.

No offence but what exactly is surprising or shallow about being pretty sure there is duck hunting in heaven?

I don’t think anyone here is surprised Huckabee believes in heaven. As atheists we don’t believe in heavan but we know christians like Huckabee do. We don’t really respect them and we mock their beliefs but we aren’t surprised by it.

As rationalists, the idea of heaven seems self-condradictory logistically challenged but again we are well aware that there is a popular believe in heaven and that heaven is a reward and pleasant.

Is it that “deep” Christians might believe heaven isn’t a happy-happy-fun-fun place we get to do everything you like but a rewarding “good for you” place? Even still we’ve all heard the believe that heaven is where you get everything you like, haven’t we? You childhood home (if it was a happy place) is restored and you get to read books that are as familiar as old favorites but infinitely rewarding and ever-lasting. As atheists and/or rationalist we might sneer at this idea as insipid but we can’t claim to be surprised that adults like Huckabee believe it?

Or is it duck hunting specifically as a pointless and dumb activity being described as “as close to heaven as possible” that you find shallow? Maybe. But I don’t you are saying that it’s enjoying duck hunting that you find surprisingly shallow. Duck hunting seems as legitimate an enjoyable activity as any other such as golf, or sailing. Would you be equally surprised if he had said he’s pretty sure there is sailing in heaven?

Or is it the incongruity that hunting *kills* things and in the afterlife every-one is already dead. (Heh. Anyone remember the Dianne Keaton movie “Heaven”? She asks if there is sex in heaven and most say yes but one 14-year says yeah but what’s the point. If you get pregnant do you give birth to baby dead people.) Well, yeah but if heaven is a fun-fun-happy place where you get everything wonderful (which we may find a stupid idea but we can claim to be surprised about) then it’s pretty obvious that the enjoyments of heaven or not constrained by any physical laws.

I mean, if heaven *is* a happy-happy-fun-fun place suited to the individual then it’s pretty much a holodeck virtual reality, isn’t it, so why not duck hunting?

Or is it the idea of heaven being a giant holodeck that you find surprising? I admit it’s a dumb idea and pretty unsatisfying as we know it’s not real but can we claim it’s at all surprising that people think of heaven this way? I always assumed just about everyone who believes in heaven thought of it this way.

Or is it that most people *don’t* think heaven is a fun-fun-happy holodeck yet believing it has duck hunting (not to mention jazz, kinky sex, sailing, cigarettes, spelunking, curry, hippies to beat up, or whatever people personally enjoy) leads directly to that conclussion and it’s shallow and stupid not to notice?

< *sigh*> It really grinds my gears that the umbrella of atheism also happens to shelter the animal rights whackos. I’m pro-reproductive freedom, also, so I give you “meat is murder/other animals=humans in value” goofballs the same advice I give the pro-forced-maternity nutjobs: If you don’t like it, don’t do it! Don’t wanna hunt? Guess what? Nobody will force you to! Don’t wanna eat meat? It’s your lucky day! Nobody will hold a gun to your head and order you to eat a Big Mac (which is about what it would take to get ME to consume one!). There! It really IS that simple!

–Wolfhound, who has never hunted but likes her steaks so rare that a good vet should be able to save them

Yeah, that “well regulated” thing is just a pain in the ass isn’t it. But then, I’m probably confusing you (a responsible gun owner) for a wingnut. If you were a wingnut, I wouldn’t even be talking to you. Wait, what’s this?

Frankly, I think an armed confrontation between medical marijuana growers and the federal thugs who harass them might be a good thing.

I am a vegetarian, animal lover. It is morally repugnant to me to derive pleasure from killing a helpless animal for sport. I think the Carolina Parakeets and Passenger Pigeons would agree.

However, I understand that some people do kill for meat and clothing. I can’t condemn that. I just hate it when rednecks (I live in south Georgia) give each other high fives when they gun down Bambi from a tree stand, just so they can put a mount on their wall while the carcass rots in the woods. You rednecks want to be a man, how about taking on a wild boar with a Bowie knife?

I realize that a particular act of hunting may serve both to gratify the bloodlust of the hunter and to help manage a wild game population, but that doesn’t make the bloodlust any less barbaric.

It’s not bloodlust, you dumb shit. Sorry, but you’ve had your chance to make a reasonable and civil case, and instead you constantly assault the character and motives of a group of people you clearly know nothing about, all because you saw Bambi a few too many times. So the time has come to call you out as a plain and simple idiot, get off the computer, and go hunting. Ciao.

Would people please learn to spell hypocrisy if they’re going to throw the word around?

I can see both sides of the hunting debate. I don’t have much of a problem with hunting per se, but hunting because you like to kill things — even if you do use what you kill — as opposed to hunting because you need the meat, or you like eating game — is somewhat distasteful.

If you’re really into communing with nature, why not just walk into the woods a ways, sit down somewhere and keep really really still, and wait for the animals to come out, so you can watch them? Living animals are by far more interesting than dead animals, albeit less tasty, admittedly.

But that is what American religion is: wish-fulfillment for the gullible..

That is the problem for the rest of us on this planet. we have a slight suspicion that the world is bigger than the USA and that Christianity is slightly more complex than the minds of certain persons in the USA, which represent only a certain portion of humanity! Even as a believer, some parts of the USA would regard me as an atheist. Since I do not believe in the sky god, nor the vain illusions of the bible belt, nor the straw deities of the pious US presidential candidates.

May the various noodly stokes of their various phantasms give them comfort, but that is not faith, it is invention.

if I’m in Heaven, hunting, and I shoot my friend in the face,
it doesn’t hurt him, right? Because he’s already died?

No, you have it wrong. Heaven will be stocked with a never ending supply of your elderly lawyer friends to shoot in the face. In either case, you’re going to have a great time after your ticker finally quits on you, Mr. Vice Satan.

I just hate it when rednecks (I live in south Georgia) give each other high fives when they gun down Bambi from a tree stand, just so they can put a mount on their wall while the carcass rots in the woods.

I think we can all agree that the practice you describe is both wasteful and repugnant. However, I have seen no evidence that it is particularly widespread. The hunters I know do, in fact, sometimes mount the heads of their kills. But they certainly don’t waste the meat. (BTW, you don’t have to use the pelts yourselves benefit from them. They can be sold for use in any number of ways, and I believe they often are.) These Rednecks you speak of are presumably not rich, so why would they waste good meat? I’ll concede that I only have the evidence of the hunters I know personally, and you’ll have to take my word for that.

Uppity atheists? It’s an “uppity Negro” Pharyngula helped make Dr William D. Rubinstein feel like back in 2005, when he ventured a few criticisms of evolution:

Although I have written on a good many controversial and emotive topics over the years, nothing I have ever written has ever generated the kind of abuse, often virtually hysterical, as did this show of force by so-called “scientists”. While I have an extremely thick skin, being on the receiving end of this onslaught gave me a good insight into what an “uppity Negro” must have experienced in rural Alabama in 1910 when confronted by a gang of armed, hooded, screaming Ku Klux Klansmen after midnight.

The main thing you and other anti-hunters don’t understand is that the sport of hunting is not about the kill. It’s about getting closer to nature, learning the habits and defenses of the quarry, and matching your wits not against the animal but against nature’s power to sharpen a creature’s senses and instincts for surviving on its home turf. Serious hunting gives one a type of powerfully respectful perspective on nature which can’t be understood without feeling it for yourself.

I’m not anti-hunting in general, but hunting *is* about the kill, if you’re planning to eat/wear/display whatever it is that you’ve shot. I’m glad that people have the gonads to hunt feral hogs around here, because the pigs are not native, they’re destructive to the environment, and they’re scary and dangerous to encounter while hiking or horseback riding.

But to pretend that most hunting that occurs in the Lower 48 (especially in this (red)neck of the woods) emphasizes honing one’s knowledge of nature and animal behavior, is pretty much a load of Questing Beast fewmets. Deer hunting takes place on managed ranches, from the comfort of a cooler-equipped deer stand, and the deer are brought closer to the stands with feed. What do you think those camouflage-colored bags of deer corn stacked in the feed store are for?

And what’s natural or “wits-matching” about blasting doves in a sunflower field, from the comfort of a camp stool or four-wheeler, and then sending your Labrador retriever into the field to fetch the bird carcass? There aren’t many black bears around here, but I know that in Oregon (for example) hunters often bait them with stale donuts and sweets…which is illegal, btw, but doesn’t stop hunters from doing it. Not exactly “learning the habits and defenses of the quarry”, unless you count a fondness for high fructose corn syrup among those habits.

Yeah, nothing says “loving nature” more then going in to the woods and firing a gun on some animal and thus scaring away all animals half a mile around.

As for Troutnut, just an advice. If a discussion makes you so angry as this one does, you should rather chill out a bit and think about the arguments, then heaping insults on somebody. ;)

I don’t necessary agree with what Jason says, but his argument is pretty clear:

If someone hunts to maintain balance in animal populations and to preserve nature. That’s ok.

If someone hunts because he finds the act of shooting on an animal fun, likes the thrill of stalking an animal, the excitement of hiding and waiting, then that’s not ok.

If someone hunts because he likes being out, likes nature etc. than this person has no real reason to hunt at all, since he could have the same fun while hiking without the need to kill wild animals. And as a bonus, it’s less messy.

I completely agree with this sentiment but I think there are some hunters who are not in it for the bloodlust.

Sure. In the developing world many people hunt because it is the only way they can reasonably feed their family. And even in America, I’m sure there are some hunters who take no pleasure in the suffering and death of the animal, but who are genuinely motivated by environmental concerns. But for the vast majority of American hunters, all this business about game management and the like is just an excuse, a rationalization. They’re really in it for the kill. They do it because they like chasing down poor defenseless wild creatures and killing them. It’s the thrill of the chase. The gratification of stalking something and shooting it. They should at least have the honesty to admit this, instead of hiding behind all these pretexts about environmental stewardship.

Really? I always assumed it was the only logical conclussion if heaven is supposed to be a place where you are rewarded with eternal and extreme happiness.

Either that or heaven was a giant heroin shooting-gallery.

I mean think about it. What else logically can eternal personal happiness be?

Let me see if I have this right…
if I’m in Heaven, hunting, and I shoot my friend in the face,
it doesn’t hurt him, right? Because he’s already died?

Well, obviously!

Think about it. If my idea of heaven is where I live in my childhood home and play with my dog and my mom bakes me cookies, while my mom’s idea of heaven is that she’s backpacking across Europe and never met her no-good husband or got tied down with those bratty kids, and my dog’s idea of heaven is that he lives on a ranch chasing rabbits, then obviously the mom and dog in my heaven or not my actual dog and mom so they can’t get hurt.

====
Old man Morty dies. Two weeks later his best buddy Saul dies. Saul wakes to find himself in a golden field. There’s his pal Morty frollicking and making love to a bevy of beautiful and buxom maidens. “Morty!” claims Saul. “We’re dead and we got into heaven!”

“Alas, no,” says Morty pointing to the maidens. “We are in hell and we are their punishment.”

You object to hunting solely because of what you assume is going on in the mind of the hunter during the hunt. Do you have ANY evidence to support your characterization of the mindset of the typical American hunter? Have you ever even spoken to a hunter? Do you know what everyone is thinking all the time, or just hunters while hunting? In short, can you give us ANY reason at all to listen to you?

It’s wrong to kill other human beings because humans are — from the human viewpoint — more important than other animals. From an objective viewpoint, humans are more self-aware and intelligent.

This principle is obviously not a defense of the hunting of animals, just a reason to oppose the hunting of human beings more strongly than the hunting of animals. So, again, if it would be wrong to terrorize and kill people for pleasure, why isn’t it also wrong to terrorize and kill animals for pleasure?

I’m doing right now, WHILE I type this. I’m experiencing the visceral thrill of inflicting pain, suffering and death. Jason is standing right next to me, reading my mind. Too bad my laptop doesn’t have a camera or I’d prove it. You can trust me though, as sure as my name is BlockStacker!

@ woozy, That’s why it’s so good. It’s the most accurate and concise description of heaven I’ve ever heard, yet I’ve never heard it and can’t believe I didn’t think of it myeslf.

You object to hunting solely because of what you assume is going on in the mind of the hunter during the hunt.

I am not opposed to all hunting. If someone has a genuine need to hunt to feed his family, or in cases where hunting is the most humane option reasonably available for legitimately controlling populations of wild animals, I believe it may be ethically justified. I also believe that the vast majority of hunting in modern America does not meet these conditions, or any other condition that might reasonably justify it. It is done to satisfy the barbaric urge of the hunter to stalk and kill living creatures.

The evidence I have seen is that hunting in America is in decline, and that the animal rights movement is growing. So hunters are likely to become increasingly marginalized and increasingly subject to public disapproval. I welcome these trends.

As for Troutnut, just an advice. If a discussion makes you so angry as this one does, you should rather chill out a bit and think about the arguments, then heaping insults on somebody.

I don’t necessary agree with what Jason says, but his argument is pretty clear:

If someone hunts to maintain balance in animal populations and to preserve nature. That’s ok.

Oh please, what thread have you been reading? Jason et al. began posting here by characterizing ALL hunters using numerous perjoratives, insults, and shouting emotives (e.g., it’s “fundamentally barbaric”, “killing for pleasure”, “TERRORIZING AND KILLING ANIMALS FOR PLEASURE”, etc.). In comparison, Troutnut’s responses were far more reasonable and polite despite the repeated provocation.

Neither the decrease of hunting nor the growth of the Animal rights movement can be attributed to the “barbaric” urges of the hunter. I submit that a decrease in hunting can be more readily attributed to the continuing urbanization of North America, as well as a rise in wealth, leading to increased consumption of commercial meat. As for the growth of the Animal Rights movement, Evangelical Christianity has grown by leaps and bounds as well. Should we therefore conclude that all of their beliefs are correct?

Also, care to define the word Barbaric as you use it? Primative? Unsophisticated? Not from Athens?

The idea that private ownership of guns will prevent a totalitarian government coming to power coming to power in the US is just wierd. Yes, in the past, private citizens have been able to fend off some limited actions by a government, but these days the differential between government arms and the sort of arms that citizens have is just incredible. I dont know of many private citizens who own, for instance, anti aircraft weaponary. Or tanks. Or strike fighter aircraft.
And that is BEFORE we get to the idea that it takes more than guns to defeat a military force determined to crush its enemies. The Iraqi army was, if I recall, the third or fourth largest set of gun toting people in the world but they were swept aside by the American army.
And before you start saying that American forces are being defeated by private arms now, there are a couple of problems with that. Firstly, the American army is (for the most part) fighting under pretty strict rules of engagement which the totalitarian government wouldnt be, and secondly, they arent being defeated..

Neither the decrease of hunting nor the growth of the Animal rights movement can be attributed to the “barbaric” urges of the hunter.

I think both can be attributed in part to the increasing public recognition that hunting is barbaric.

I submit that a decrease in hunting can be more readily attributed to the continuing urbanization of North America, as well as a rise in wealth, leading to increased consumption of commercial meat.

I’m sure the decline in hunting is attributable, in part and perhaps in the main, to that. Whatever the cause, it’s a good thing and bodes well for further, and probably accelerating, decline in the future. The fewer hunters there are, the fewer Americans will be socialized into hunting as children by their fathers/uncles/grandfathers. And the fewer children who are socialized into the barbaric activity, the fewer will hunt as adults, or teach their own children to hunt. It’s a virtuous cycle. It’s like the decline of religion in that way.

As for the growth of the Animal Rights movement, Evangelical Christianity has grown by leaps and bounds as well.

Religion in America is in decline also. The liberal denominations tend to be declining the fastest, but religion as a whole is declining also. Same in Europe and the rest of the developed world.

And I would suggest there is a signficant connection between the rise of the animal rights movement and the decline of religion (rise of secularism). A secular ethics rooted in conscience and reason is likely to be more disapproving of the infliction of suffering and death on sentient creatures of any species than a religious ethics rooted in traditional notions of human “dominion” over the natural world. Science increasingly seems to suggest that the differences in mental characteristics and abilities between human beings and animal species are quantitative rather than qualitative, and I think that understanding will tend to promote the more humane treatment of animals in all contexts, especially complex sentient mammals such as the ones commonly targeted by hunters (deer, pigs, etc.).

Also, care to define the word Barbaric as you use it?

I’m mean the word in pretty much its standard sense. Here’s a formal definition, from dictionary.com: without civilizing influences; uncivilized; primitive

Oh yeah, well people who believe that are stupid, granola-eating, PETA-supporting morons.
Gee, aren’t these deragatory generalizations easy? And I bet most thought that only the creationists around here were emotional and irrational.
Do any of you characterizing ALL hunting (or the practice of eating meat for that matter) has barbaric have an actual rational argument, or is just shouting insults the best you can do?

You mean like your rational argument “stupid, granola-eating, PETA-supporting morons?” When you’re so consumed by emotion that you commit the very offense you’re attributing to others and don’t even realize it, it’s probably time to take a break and think about what you’re saying a little more carefully.

As I said earlier, all ethical beliefs ultimately rest on moral sentiments or instincts, so a moral belief cannot be justified rationally in the same kind of way that, say, a mathematical proposition can. But reason can certainly be used to produce or test moral conclusions given certain premises. If you want a formal argument for animal rights, I suggest you read Peter Singer. The basic principle he appeals to is “equal consideration of interests.” Animals have interests just as human beings do, such as the interest in avoiding suffering and in experiencing pleasure or enjoyment. My hostility towards hunting, and my strong support for the animal rights movement, flows in part from that principle.

You don’t seem to understand that my objection is to your asserting what is “good” or “bad” as well as “right” or “wrong”, not to mention “barbaric” or “civilized” without giving any substantive reason why we should feel the same way.

Even assuming for the moment that all hunters do take pleasure in killing, why would that alone be enough to neutralize the positive results of their actions?

Your continued use of emotionally loaded words and nebulous words like “barbaric” (which you further define as “uncivilized” or “primitive”, as if that makes it any clearer) doesn’t help your case.

Basically, you hold a belief about a group of people who you clearly have very little understanding of. You are trying to justify your belief basically by saying (among other things) “Hunting is bad, and my proof is that there are less hunters than there used to be.”

Finally, you’ve come to an Atheist website to argue your unfounded beliefs. I’ll let you figure out why that is absurd.

I’m really surprised at you people. I thought only the religious had the “man rules the world” idea. A shame.

Even Dawkins knows it’s wrong.

“Many of us shrink from judicial execution of even the most horrible human criminals, while we cheerfully countenance the shooting without trial of fairly mild animal pests. Indeed we kill members of other harmless species as a means of recreation and amusement.” -Richard Dawkins

I strongly support hunter’s rights. I say that though I do not own a gun and do not hunt (I do fish though). We live in a very commercial world – nothing gets protected unless it has some kind of value. Hunters need game which need space without buildings close by, which means conservation not just for the hunted species but all the other that live in the same space. Without hunters we would have more Wallmarts and Mcdonalds and pig farms where there are now fields and forests. Let the hunters hunt. If they didn’t, animals like deer would quickly overpopualte in the summer and die off in the winter in a far more uncomfortable manner than being shot.
Sentimentalists with warm hearts and good intentions can be wild animals’ worst enemy. I say all this while agreeing with PZ in his post.

Even assuming for the moment that all hunters do take pleasure in killing, why would that alone be enough to neutralize the positive results of their actions?

As a purely emotional response, a person who enjoys killing or torturing anything (humans, other mammals, etc.) seems a little twisted. For example, a lab that experiments on dogs can generate a positive value but if one of the scientists enjoys torturing the dog then overall he seems repugnant despite the positive value of his research.

You don’t seem to understand that my objection is to your asserting what is “good” or “bad” as well as “right” or “wrong”, not to mention “barbaric” or “civilized” without giving any substantive reason why we should feel the same way.

See my last post for a bit of discussion of my ethics. I’m basically a utilitarian. My beliefs about the proper treatment of animals come from that moral framework. On what do you base your beliefs about right and wrong?

Even assuming for the moment that all hunters do take pleasure in killing, …

You don’t need to make that assumption because I never said and don’t believe that “all” hunters take pleasure in killing. But I do believe that the vast majority of American hunters hunt for the pleasure they get from stalking and killing their prey, not out of some publicly-minded concern about the evironment.

Your continued use of emotionally loaded words and nebulous words like “barbaric” (which you further define as “uncivilized” or “primitive”, as if that makes it any clearer) doesn’t help your case.

Well, gosh, what do you want me to do? You asked what I mean by “barbaric” and I told you and quoted a definition. I’m not using the word in any unconventional sense, I’m using it in the ordinary way. If you don’t know what “uncivilized” or “primitive” mean, look them up yourself.

Basically, you hold a belief about a group of people who you clearly have very little understanding of.

I think I understand them quite well.

You are trying to justify your belief basically by saying (among other things) “Hunting is bad, and my proof is that there are less hunters than there used to be.”

Yet another strawman. I never said, and do not believe, that hunting or any act is good or bad depending on how many people engage in it. You really need to read what I write and stop attributing to me beliefs I have not expressed.

What I said is that I believe that hunting is bad (a moral belief), that hunting appears to be in decline (an empirical claim), and that I think one of the reasons hunting is in decline is that a growing number of people are coming to believe that it is bad. I also think this trend is related to the decline of religion, the decline of the primitive religious notion of human “dominion” over nature, and a growing awareness of a more sophisticated, scientifically-informed, understanding of the differences between humans and other species.

Not really sure why so many gun nuts who think they’re keeping the government at bay don’t get this, but a squad of Marines with an Abrams tank and a little close air support is gonna take out your “militia” in about 30 seconds or less. “Pry your gun from your cold dead hands?” They could do it pretty easily actually. I’m not anti-gun, I’m a former Marine and taught rifle range. But the idea that having the citizens of America armed could stop the government from seizing your property or etc. is just stupid. The military could take over in a coup any time they want. Go out there and vote for people that won’t let that happen if that really matters to you.

You mean like your rational argument “stupid, granola-eating, PETA-supporting morons?” When you’re so consumed by emotion that you commit the very offense you’re attributing to others and don’t even realize it, it’s probably time to take a break and think about what you’re saying a little more carefully.

Sheesh Jason, nothing gets by you….oh, wait.

The part of my previous comment you’ve focused on was meant to be sarcastic. I believe that is obvious to anyone following along. Apparently you missed it so next time I’ll be sure to include the appropriate tags.

…moral belief cannot be justified rationally in the same kind of way that, say, a mathematical proposition can. But reason can certainly be used to produce or test moral conclusions given certain premises. If you want a formal argument for animal rights, I suggest you read Peter Singer. The basic principle he appeals to is “equal consideration of interests.”

Applying reason is rational, Jason. BTW, I’ve read some of Singer’s stuff. What I found was nothing but an appeal to emotion with little substantiation.

Your continued use of emotionally loaded words and nebulous words like “barbaric” (which you further define as “uncivilized” or “primitive”, as if that makes it any clearer) doesn’t help your case.

Well, gosh, what do you want me to do? You asked what I mean by “barbaric” and I told you and quoted a definition. I’m not using the word in any unconventional sense, I’m using it in the ordinary way. If you don’t know what “uncivilized” or “primitive” mean, look them up yourself.

Once again, Jason misses the point. We know what barbaric means Jason. Your continued use of insults and other offensive perjoratives doesn’t help your case. They just make you appear like most PETA supporters do to the vast majority of the public: Emotional and irrational.

If you seriously believe that Singer’s writings on animal rights or ethics in general is “nothing but an appeal to emotion with little substantiation” then I suggest you try reading him again. The man is a distinguished moral philosopher. In fact, he is considered by some to be the most influential living moral philosopher, because of the pivotal role his book Animal Liberation played in creating, and providing the intellectual framework for, the modern animal rights movement. His book Practical Ethics is a standard text in college philosophy classes. Even those in the academic community who disagree with Singer generally praise the quality and rigor of his arguments.

Of course, none of that means he’s right. But this idea you seem to have that the animal rights movement, including opposition to hunting, is basically just mushy sentimentality and raw emotion is just utter nonsense.

Once again, Jason misses the point. We know what barbaric means Jason. Your continued use of insults and other offensive perjoratives doesn’t help your case. They just make you appear like most PETA supporters do to the vast majority of the public: Emotional and irrational.

I’ll be blunt. Hunters seem uncivilized since the joy of the hunt and kill followed by dragging a carcass back from which you will butcher, skin and retrieve trophies seems a little Paleolithic. Some people believe that society has improved since then and think that part of that is to not view the hunt, kill, and trophies as signs of man’s prowess over other creatures.

Now, I don’t think that hunting in general is necessarily bad but the only hunters who have a chance of gaining my respect are those who respect the creature they are hunting without the gloating over severed heads.

They just make you appear like most PETA supporters do to the vast majority of the public: Emotional and irrational.

I see this claim a lot from people like you. The claim that public opinion is overwhelmingly hostile to PETA, and views the organization as irrational and extremist. I’m sure that’s what you believe. And I’m sure it’s what you would like the “vast majority of the public” to believe. But do you have any evidence that it’s what they actually believe?

In terms of growth and a record of concrete achievements, PETA has been remarkarbly successful. And while that doesn’t necessarily mean your claim regarding what “the vast majority of the public” think of the organization is false, it does suggest your claim is rather implausible.

Why do deer populations need us to thin them out? Could it be because we killed all their natural predators? Like we killed the buffalo, Passenger Pigeons, Carolina Parakeets, and virtually all the megafauna where our ancestors settled? How much of that killing was for food and how much for sport? This killing is, in my opinion, the most heinous of our atavistic tendencies, and the sooner we stop it the better.

On another note, as a pathologist I see tons and tons of heart disease and cancer directly caused by the tremendous amount of animal fat we consume. It is not unreasonable for us to commit to a plant-based diet which is much healthier for us and the planet.

Quoting only the 2nd Amendment is quote mining, since it ignores the main Constitutional context.
US Constitution excerpt:

Article 1, section 8: Responsibilities of federal government

10. To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offences against the law of nations:

11. To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water:

12. To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years:

13. To provide and maintain a navy:

14. To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces:

15. To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions:

16. To provide for organizing, arming and disciplining the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress

And jcr’s claim that

When we overthrew our German king (George III, the Hanoverian nutcase), we did so with our privately owned arms…

is just ridiculous: Amwerican militias throughout the 18th and 19th century were the badly armed, untrained, undisciplined troops that army officers dreaded having to use, who often fled at or before the first shot. Militias were eliminated in the mid-19th century, for being useless and scandalous.

“Why do deer populations need us to thin them out? Could it be because we killed all their natural predators?”
Yes Ddwimmr it is, but that is how they are now and everytime someone suggest reintroducin wolves farmers and suburban mothers cry out in fear, so we have to deal with it.
So we go and become vegans the the rest of the winlderness that is now hunting territory becomes monoculture farm, treated with herbicides and pesticides.
My argument for hunting it is that on the demand side hunters ensure we keep some wild land.

It takes far more land to grow the crops needed to feed the animals from which we get meat than it would if we ate the crops ourselves instead. Meat production is an incredibly inefficient use of farmland (and all the other resources that go into it, like water for irrigation). There is no serious doubt that a vegetarian diet is much more environmentally friendly than a meat-eating one. Even if Americans just reduced the amount of meat they eat, rather than cut it out altogether, it would be beneficial to the environment, the animals, and their own health.

You said:I also believe that the vast majority of hunting in modern America does not meet these conditions, or any other condition that might reasonably justify it. It is done to satisfy the barbaric urge of the hunter to stalk and kill living creatures.

The evidence I have seen is that hunting in America is in decline, and that the animal rights movement is growing. So hunters are likely to become increasingly marginalized and increasingly subject to public disapproval. I welcome these trends.

Then I said,You are trying to justify your belief basically by saying (among other things) “Hunting is bad, and my proof is that there are less hunters than there used to be.”

Then you said,Yet another strawman. I never said, and do not believe, that hunting or any act is good or bad depending on how many people engage in it. You really need to read what I write and stop attributing to me beliefs I have not expressed.

I suppose that I could have phrased that better. I meant to say that you were arguing that the hunter hunts to satisfy his barbaric urges, and that you submitted as evidence of these urges that hunting was in decline, or that there are less hunters than there used to be.

You don’t need to make that assumption because I never said and don’t believe that “all” hunters take pleasure in killing. But I do believe that the vast majority of American hunters hunt for the pleasure they get from stalking and killing their prey, not out of some publicly-minded concern about the evironment.

Alright, the vast majority then. I certainly agree that your average hunter does not hunt because he wants to help the environment. However, his personal reasons don’t necessarily change the results of his actions.

By the way, You don’t seem to have read what I said particularly closely, because you have never responded to what I feel is the major environmental benefit of hunting. This is that when the hunter eats wild game, he foregoes eating meat from the supermarket. The game comes from undeveloped wild habitat, whereas the cows come from deforested land and are fed on grains that were grown in an irresponsible manner.

Not to mention the very real fact you seem to skirt around, which is that wild game makes up a significant portion of the rural diet. Deer meat you kill is much cheaper than food from the supermarket, and many poorer families would not be able to get by without this source of nutrition. I hope you can also acknowledge that vegetarianism is not a viable substitute for these people, as vegetables and vegetarian proteins are actually fairly expensive, and in short supply for people who’s nearest supermarket may be quite a ways away (don’t bother asking a rural grocer for tofu).

I am intrigued by anti-hunters’ insistence on the idea that hunters “terrorize” the animals they hunt. Precisely how are the animals terrorized? The average game bird or deer, elk, moose, rabbit, bear, or any game has to be approached so as not to alarm it, let alone terrorize it.

There is also the image of “blasting things into bloody shreds” or some such variant. A duck hit with birdshot does not explode in a cloud as if it had swallowed a grenade; often only one or two shot will have hit and killed it. Nor, contrary to myth, do people use howitzers on deer or other large game. The method is to use a bullet of sufficient size delivered with enough speed and impact by an accurate shot to kill the animal immediately. If a shot is off for whatever reason and an animal wounded, good hunters make every effort to track and find the animal. That’s why bird hunters use dogs not only to find and flush game, but to retrieve it.

The consumption of flesh is the most cost effective way to obtain b complex vitamins.

This seems unlikely. Do you have a source for this claim? Even if it’s true, the additional cost of obtaining B vitamins from other sources when following a vegetarian diet could not possibly exceed the savings that diet would produce over a meat-eating one in other ways.

There is also the image of “blasting things into bloody shreds” or some such variant. A duck hit with birdshot does not explode in a cloud as if it had swallowed a grenade; often only one or two shot will have hit and killed it.

Yes, killing is so humane. Hey, this argument could work for humans, too!

I meant to say that you were arguing that the hunter hunts to satisfy his barbaric urges,

I have said that. I am saying that. In America today, most hunters hunt to satisfy their barbaric urge to chase and kill things, not out of some concern for the environment or some other public purpose. I did not say, as you falsely claimed, that the decline in hunting is “proof” (or even just evidence) that hunting is bad. I do think the decline in hunting is in part a consequence of the growing belief among Americans that hunting for sport is wrong. I think that the decline will likely continue, and probably accelerate, as fewer and fewer Americans are socialized into hunting as children.

you have never responded to what I feel is the major environmental benefit of hunting. This is that when the hunter eats wild game, he foregoes eating meat from the supermarket. The game comes from undeveloped wild habitat, whereas the cows come from deforested land and are fed on grains that were grown in an irresponsible manner.

I don’t think that’s a benefit at all. If I were shown credible evidence that hunting in America reduces the net amount of animal suffering or has environmental benefits or other kinds of benefit that outweigh the harm hunters inflict on their prey, I might be persuaded to change my opinion of it. I don’t believe there is any such evidence, but if you think there is, I’d love to see it.

Not to mention the very real fact you seem to skirt around, which is that wild game makes up a significant portion of the rural diet.

Another highly dubious factual claim. Do you have any sources to substantiate and quantify these assertions you keep making? What proportion of the meat consumed in America is produced through hunting versus farming, for example? Do you know?

I am intrigued by anti-hunters’ insistence on the idea that hunters “terrorize” the animals they hunt. Precisely how are the animals terrorized? The average game bird or deer, elk, moose, rabbit, bear, or any game has to be approached so as not to alarm it, let alone terrorize it.

The “average” one? How often is the prey animal killed quickly and cleanly by a skilled hunter of which it is unaware, rather than being chased and stalked and wounded by an inexperienced or incompetent (and perhaps alcohol-impaired) amateur or child? Evidence please, not unsubstantiated assertion.

I quick google search yielded this piece about the problem of waterfowl wounded by hunters. It’s not from any animal rights organization, it’s from the South Dakota Department of Game, Fish and Parks. Quote:

At a past Central Flyway summer meeting in New Mexico, the Central Flyway Council passed a very important Waterfowl Wounding Losses Problem Statement. This statement recognizes that wounding and unretrieved harvest of waterfowl is a long-standing and serious problem. It goes on to state that since the wounding loss rate has remained relatively constant over time, regardless of changes in shotshell technology, these losses are most closely related to hunter behavior and hunter shooting skills.

So, what is the magnitude of struck-but-unretrieved waterfowl in the U.S. and Canada? U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) harvest survey results show that hunters reported an average annual wounding loss rate of 18 percent from the 1930’s to the present time. However, hunters do not see all the birds that they wound. Numerous U.S. and Canada research studies have been published involving trained observers that record the harvest efficiency of thousands of duck hunters in the field. These studies document wounding rates of more than 30 percent. Therefore, if you reconcile hunter and trained observer reports, the wounding rate on ducks is at least 25 percent. Wounding losses on geese are similar. This means that approximately 3.4 to 3.7 million ducks and geese go unretrieved each year in the U.S. and Canada combined. To put this into perspective, in South Dakota, during a good year, we will harvest about 300,000 ducks and 140,000 geese. The switch to non-toxic (steel) shot was put in effect because of the losses of about 2-million waterfowl annually, due to lead poisoning. It is time for hunters to get serious about reducing wounding losses.

And here (pdf) is a study on the wounding rate of white-tailed deer by bow hunters. The study found a wounding rate of 50%. That is, half of the deer shot by the hunters were not recovered, but were left to die a slow and painful death from their injuries.

I’ve just spent time google hunting stories and it seems there are a lot of hunters out there tracking things through the woods by following their blood trails (because the poor animal has an arrow or bullet in its side).

Crikey Jason, just how old are you?
“Vitamin B-12 is needed to metabolize folate and maintain the insulation surrounding nerves. … Vitamin B-12 does not occur naturally in plant foods.”
“There are no good or bad foods. The focus should be on balancing a total diet by choosing many nutritious foods.”
Gordon Wardlaw, Contemporary Nutrition.
Did you notice that last remark states the need for a balance? Vegetarians by their menu selection eat an unbalanced diet. Ayup, too much fatty food is bad for you, but a diet of beans and greens is not necessarily better, it’s just different.
I often joke that the smartest people I know are from Ohio; they woke realized they were in Ohio and immediately left! I thinking of modifying that joke that the dumbest people I know are vegetarians. I have yet to meet a vegetarian that actually understands nutrition. It doesn’t prevent them from lecturing the rest of us on the subject.

Besides, as everyone knows, there is duck hunting in heaven. Every day is opening day, and when the Great Mallard opens his bill and quacks the signal, all of the ducks start hunting … hunting the souls of expired ‘sportsmen’.

Rabbit season!

duck season.

RABBIT season!

duck season.

RABBIT SEASON!

rabbit season.

DUCK SEASON!… FIRE!

I think this is the exact conversation Dick Cheney was having with his buddy the last time they went hunting together.

Vegetarians obtain Vitamin B12 from dairy products, eggs or other sources. All necessary vitamins can be obtained without eating meat. There is absolutely no need for modern Americans to eat meat for health and nutrition. There is abundant evidence that a vegetarian diet is healthier than a meat-eating one, primarily because of the contribution of animal fat to heart disease. The production of meat is also a highly inefficient and wasteful use of farmland, water, and other resources. Bacteria and other pathogens carried by food animals are also a major source of infectious disease in human beings.

Hmmm, so we can get animal products without raising animals? Oh, I see we just raise that chicken to harvest its embryos and that cow just for its lactation capability. Ever raise chickens? I have, 3 years of vocational agriculture in high school. Chickens don’t lay eggs after 18 months. What then, you want a pet chicken? Cows last a bit longer but they also stop producing long before their lifespan ends.
Your preaching and endless appeals to emotion demonstrate that a conversation or debate with you is futile. Mit ihm ist nicht gut Kirschen essen.
Read to refute not to understand; that is the path to stupidity.

Hmmm. It’s a pity I’ll never know. I guess I’ll just have to believe the rumors.

I had a conversation with some Christian folks this weekend, where one was saying she was anemic. “Well, I guess I just have to eat more beef.”

You would not believe the hostile response I got when I pointed out I haven’t eaten beef in 30 years and am not anemic (which is the truth). I’d even go so far as to say these Christians were rude and arrogant in their response. Go figure.

I do have Crohn’s, though. Wouldn’t eating food that’s more difficult to digest just make that condition worse?

That’s why I haven’t visited here lately. No internet connection at the hospital, where I was admitted after a trip to the emergency room. Using the Lord’s name in vain in response to the pain I felt probably did not enhance my chances to see if angels drive Hummers. I don’t think I diminished those chances, though.

Onkel #166:
1. My chickens still lay after more than 32 months, though two of them are down to an egg every other day. Seems they don’t know any better – but they are happy chickens.
2. Hmmm, so we can get animal products without raising animals?
Not yet, but I imagine 100 years from now people who don’t eat high-quality animal products from in vitro factories will be considered barbarians, because real animals will have to die.

As an ex-military member, I’d just like to say that jcr’s ideas about a militia protecting the people from an totalitarian government are… quaint. A miitia faced with a full-time highly trained group of soldiers with exactly the same equipment is going to lose big time. If you add in all of the command and control, air support, armour and other toys avaiable to the modern soldier, any confrontation becomes a massacre. The best a militia might be able to do is take occassional potshots at the soldiers. But they certainly wouldn’t be able to stop the soldiers from taking command. The idea is quite simply ludicrous.

There seems to be a surplus of domestic pets in animal shelters all over the country. Why not just set up a hunting preserve, ship the dogs and cats in, and let the hunters have at it. Oh, maybe it just wouldn’t seem right to massacre the poor bastards when they run up to you wagging their tails. Cats, though, may actually be more of a challenge to hunt down.

I do have Crohn’s, though. Wouldn’t eating food that’s more difficult to digest just make that condition worse

In my experience, yes.

Avoid anything with “shells and bones”… legumes, salads, corn (things like hummus, where the nasty bits have been pureed, shold be OK). I also found that wheat bran (whole wheat) was a problem, but I didn’t have any problems with oats and rice. Of course, when it’s really bad you aren’t going to keep anything down, even liquids. Especially if you’ve perforated.

As for anemia.. there are two forms of anemia, low iron and B12 deficiency. Iron is best absorbed by humans from heme sources (blood), liver has the most available iron. Vitamin C helps absorbtion from all sources. B12 is only available from animal products and bacteria. Regular vegetarians are OK because of the dairy, but vegans have to take supplements.

The fact that most people in the West eat too much meat is not an reason for vegetarianism, it’s a reason to not eat so much meat. That said, as an omnivore I don’t see why there’s so much harshness towards vegetarians. I have no patience for Vegans (Honey is slavery! Milk is rape!). Regular vegetarianism (ovo-lacto, some eat fish and shellfish) can be the healthiest option for some people. There’s genetics in play that we are just beginning to understand.

Taking the Christian approach, we can say that ducks live a good life and therefore are not sinners. Politicians, on the other hand… So, the conclusion is that, yes, there’s ducks hunting in Heaven. And guess what they like to hunt?

“It takes far more land to grow the crops needed to feed the animals from which we get meat than it would if we ate the crops ourselves instead. Meat production is an incredibly inefficient bladidibla….
Jason you are entirely changing the subject here. I am not talking about growing meat compared with growing vegies. I agree with your point there, to a degree. I am talking about the hunting lobby helping to protect non-agricultural natural land. Get rid of hunting and you get rid of one politically important lobby to conserve wild habitat.

“The consumption of flesh is the most cost effective way to obtain b complex vitamins.
This seems unlikely. Do you have a source for this claim?”
If you were unlucky enough to get pernicious anemia (a failure of your body to produce intinsic factor) before synthisized injectable vitamin B was available, the only cure was to eat raw liver soon after the animal had been killed. As a vegan you would die…..

“I do have Crohn’s, though. Wouldn’t eating food that’s more difficult to digest just make that condition worse”
I understand they have a lot of success recently treating Crohn’s by feeding he patient with parasitic worms. Below is one article of many. I imagine many GPs may be slow to try such unusual treatment.http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4091881.stm

177 comments, and it all boils down to the same thing:
Vegetarians who pay attention are often healthier than meat eaters. Meat does confer some nutritional benefits. Some people like to hunt animals, and hunting is a necessity in some areas to keep pests like deer from destroying the ecosystem (which they will do on their own, since they breed like mad). Other people, although they may eat animals, think it’s a shame that animals do have to die and don’t want to spend their spare time and money doing more of it, because they don’t see how that can be enjoyable.
Did I miss anything?

Not to mention the very real fact you seem to skirt around, which is that wild game makes up a significant portion of the rural diet. Deer meat you kill is much cheaper than food from the supermarket, and many poorer families would not be able to get by without this source of nutrition. I hope you can also acknowledge that vegetarianism is not a viable substitute for these people, as vegetables and vegetarian proteins are actually fairly expensive, and in short supply for people who’s nearest supermarket may be quite a ways away (don’t bother asking a rural grocer for tofu).

Wow, things certainly have changed since both sets of my grandparents raised their families in relative poverty, in the rural Midwest. Wild game was a very small part of the diet, and I’m counting lake-caught fish as wild game. Many of the rural poor in 20th century US kept substantial vegetable gardens, fruit trees, chickens, and pigs. My grandparents provided most of the nutrition for their families through these sources for a couple of decades, and they were by no means unusual in that respect.

Maybe it’s not possible to maintain a productive vegetable garden and can or otherwise preserve food, or to keep a flock of chickens, if you’re an alcoholic or a meth addict, though.

Troutnut at Jason: “It’s not bloodlust, you dumb shit.”
JD’s assessment of Troutnut’s responses to Jason: “Troutnut’s responses were far more reasonable and polite”

With arguments like that I’m beginning to wonder if we’ve got us some good ol’ Republican, right-thinkin’, Jesus-lovin’, patriotic ,good ol’ boys amongst us! We gonna need us a lynch mob, fellas!

Also, I’ve hunted in my time and spent time with hunters: for the most part, Jason has it right – hunters hunt because they love the thrill of stalking and killing a ‘wild’ animal. Whether they eat their quarry afterwards doesn’t alter the fact. I quoted ‘wild’ because most of the planet is really just a theme park where we allow animals to live or die, dependent on our whims, desires and apathy.

Also, while we’re ‘doing’ gun ownership: whoever thinks the right to bear arms is still relevant, useful or desirable today is living in a wild west fantasy. Hand guns have one purpose: to kill people. Similarly, semi / automatic weapons. Public ownership of either will not stop a military coup (if Bush somehow manages the next stage in his Great Plan). Take a look at gun laws around the rest of the civilised planet … the USA is a century behind and more closely aligned with Uncle Bob’s Zulu Township. Yeehar. Meanwhile, let’s wait for the next Columbine.

I hate to interrupt all this haggling over killing ducks, but lost in the argument is the fact that Huckabee is a dishonest, crooked creationist zealot who is slowly creeping upward in the polls. I’ve written a couple of blog posts on him here, here, and here. The Arkansas Times nicely illustrates Huckabee’s record on teaching creationism in the schools here.

If Huckabee’s elected president, deciding whether or not there’s duck hunting in heaven will be the least of our problems.

I’ve had a hobby interest in guns ever since I lusted after the Lone Ranger’s silver Colt Peacemaker’s with the ivory grips. Now that I’m settled here in the US, I want to get into the Single Action Shooting Society scene and I’m looking forward to blowing squadron’s of clay discs out of the air.

I don’t have the slightest desire to shoot anything living, though. Killing unsuspecting animals with a high-powered rifle fitted with a telescopic sight or shooting down small birds with a powerful shotgun in the name of sport or, worse, as an expression of some misguided notion of manliness are utterly abhorrent. There is nothing sporting or manly about such activities. If someone wants to practice their marksmanship skill or test their courage, there are other ways that don’t involve killing. I regard fishing almost as bad.

Of course, there is a certain irony in scientists getting huffy about bloodsports when they are sacrificing large numbers of animals in the name of research.

I just love this bait-and-switch. No, I am NOT changing the subject. You asserted that if we were to become a nation of “vegans,” then “the rest of the wilderness that is now hunting territory becomes monoculture farm, treated with herbicides and pesticides.” And I pointed out in response that this is nonsense. It takes far more farmland to support a meat-eating human population than a vegetarian (or vegan) one, because of all the land needed to grow crops to feed the animals.

I’m not sure where the “vegan” thing came from, anyway, since I never proposed a vegan diet and never suggested that I believe a diet must be free of all animal products to be ethically defensible. Yet another strawman …

OK, Jason, in comment 154 you demonstrated your complete ignorance of nutrition. From an NY Times editorial last summer, about a vegan couple who starved their baby to death by feeding him solely on soy milk and fruit juice:

Indigenous cuisines offer clues about what humans, naturally omnivorous, need to survive, reproduce and grow: traditional vegetarian diets, as in India, invariably include dairy and eggs for complete protein, essential fats and vitamins. There are no vegan societies for a simple reason: a vegan diet is not adequate in the long run.

Jason
“I just love this bait-and-switch. No, I am NOT changing the subject. You asserted that if we were to become a nation of “vegans,” then “the rest of the wilderness that is now hunting territory becomes monoculture farm, treated with herbicides and pesticides.” And I pointed out in response that this is nonsense. It takes far more farmland to support a meat-eating human population than a vegetarian (or vegan) one, because of all the land needed to grow crops to feed the animals.”

No Jason it is not bait and switch, you just have not bothered to read or understand my posts. Go back and all along you will discover I have been supporting hunting because it helps protect wild-life habitat. Now if everyone become vegans, hunting goes and so wildlife habtiat now protected, because hunters lobby for such protection, gets converted to farm. Is that too hard for you to understand? I have not done one post on animal farming. I find that to discuss things with you, you argue remarkably like a fundie Christian. Are you?

No Jason it is not bait and switch, you just have not bothered to read or understand my posts. Go back and all along you will discover I have been supporting hunting because it helps protect wild-life habitat. Now if everyone become vegans, hunting goes and so wildlife habtiat now protected, because hunters lobby for such protection, gets converted to farm. Is that too hard for you to understand?

I understand your claim. I’m saying it’s utter nonsense. If “everyone become vegans” we wouldn’t even need as much farmland as we have now, let alone any more, because (for the third time), it takes far less land to feed a human being on a vegetarian (or vegan) diet than on a meat-eating one. There would be no economic incentive to preserve even the existing amount of farmland we have, let alone convert land currently used for hunting into farmland. Is that too hard for you to understand?

Not exactly. He was saying that vitamin B12 can be aquired from sources other than meat. From what I understand, the bacteria Propionibacterium shermanii is used as a source of B12 in commercial vitamin supplements.

His contention that it would be economically/ environmentally better in the long run to rely on such sources is probably less correct.

Sorry, but you’re the one who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. The piece you quote from is not a NY Times editorial, but an op-ed piece. And you seem to have completely misunderstood the author’s comment. There are no vegan societies because, among other reasons, it was not possible to create a diet free of all animal products that satisfied human nutritional requirements until the advent of modern nutrition science and food technology. But in America and other modern developed nations, thousands of people follow vegan diets, using supplements to obtain the nutrients other people obtain from meat and dairy.

But I don’t know why you’re even referring to a “vegan” diet in the first place. In the post of mine you claim to be responding to (154), I was talking about a VEGETARIAN diet, not a vegan one, and the issue I was discussing in that post was COST, not nutrition. Like many others here, you need to read the posts you’re responding to more carefully, and then maybe we wouldn’t have to waste so much time on these strawmen and other irrelevancies.

Not exactly. He was saying that vitamin B12 can be aquired from sources other than meat. From what I understand, the bacteria Propionibacterium shermanii is used as a source of B12 in commercial vitamin supplements.

Vegans need to obtain B12 from supplements or fortified foods, but vegetarians can acquire it readily from dairy products and eggs. Of course, taking vitamins and other nutrients in tablet form is very common among Americans of all dietary habits. Drug stores and supermarkets have rows and rows of such supplements, from every kind of vitamin to algae and seaweed products. There are even chain stores devoted to dietary supplements, like GNC.

His contention that it would be economically/ environmentally better in the long run to rely on such sources is probably less correct.

You’ve got to be kidding. An acre of oats produces six times the calories that would be yielded from pork if the same acre were used to feed the pig instead. And pork is the most efficient animal product. An acre of broccoli produces 24 times as much iron as an acre used for beef, and 5 times as much calcium as an acre used for milk. And it’s not just land that animal farming wastes, it’s all sorts of other natural resources too. To produce a single pound of steak uses 2,500 gallons of water, the energy equivalent of a gallon of gasoline, and 35 pounds of eroded top soil. More than a third of North America is taken up with grazing land, and more than half of U.S. croplands are used to feed livestock rather than people.

I don’t think anyone will disagree that, on its current scale, animal farming is a terrible waste of resources. What I will suggest, however, is that I don’t believe dairy/egg production is economically viable without beef/poultry slaughter.

As a vegetarian, I eat milk and eggs but not beef; as someone who worked in the meat packing industry for most of his adult life (I know, I’m a bizarre vegetarian), I can’t pretend that dairy and veal aren’t both products of the same industry. I deal with the cognitive dissonance by emersing myself in the one thing in the world that’s still pure and good: beer.

What I will suggest, however, is that I don’t believe dairy/egg production is economically viable without beef/poultry slaughter.

Well, it may not be, but that’s a completely different claim to the one you made before and that I was responding to.

Of course, even if we were to rely exclusively on animal products for vitamin B12 and other nutrients that are unavailable or more difficult to obtain from plant foods, the numbers of animals that we would need to slaughter to meet that requirement would be vastly lower than the number we slaughter now, to meet the demand for meat.

By the way, I looked further into Alan Kellog’s claim that “the consumption of flesh is the most cost effective way to obtain b complex vitamins.” I asked him to provide a source for this claim, but he has not responded. I looked up the price of B-complex vitamin tablets on a couple of websites, and it appears that the cost of such supplements is on the order of a few cents per day. It seems highly unlikely that eating meat would be a cheaper way of obtaining this nutrient. So this claim looks like more anti-vegetarian/anti-vegan nonsense from someone desperate to defend the practise of eating meat.

I didn’t mean to dismiss your remarks entirely; it may be true that the rural poor in some areas of the US obtain much of their nutrition from wild game. Alaska, Cajun Louisiana, and parts of Appalachia, as guesses off the top of my head.

But we city-dwellers often forget about the gardening, husbandry, and “putting food by” ingenuity and industriousness displayed by those in rural areas. Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle provides a good description of this lifestyle, albeit from the perspective of her relatively privileged family.

Thanks for the book recommendation. I realized that I was starting to argue a little too emotionally, and giving too much weight to personal evidence and deductive conclusions based on my own experience.

In reality, all I can say is that hunters I know (not necessarily representative of the average) freeze their meat for later use throughout the year. The hunters I know live comfortably, if simply, in rural areas. I assumed, based on this, that people with lower incomes would rely still more on saved deer meat. I also reasoned that if deer meat were not available, the hypothetical poor hunter would have to eat something else, and would, at the least have spend more money on store-bought foods, including beef and poultry. I shouldn’t have labeled any of this reasoning as “a very real fact”.

I also wanted to say you brought up a good point about other food sources like vegetable gardens.

I don’t have any numbers, but I suspect it would be hard for any family to use game as a major food source unless they were going over the legal kill limit.

I know people around here (Dallas-Ft. Worth) have been arrested for having freezers full of fish from the local lakes. The cities take overfishing fairly seriously, because they spend a lot of money on fish stock.

Someone doing the same with deer could hardly be considered environmentally friendly.

I understand your claim. I’m saying it’s utter nonsense. If “everyone become vegans” we wouldn’t even need as much farmland as we have now, let alone any more, because (for the third time), it takes far less land to feed a human being on a vegetarian (or vegan) diet than on a meat-eating one. There would be no economic incentive to preserve even the existing amount of farmland we have, let alone convert land currently used for hunting into farmland. Is that too hard for you to understand? ”

Jason I understood your argument the first time and were we a stable population it would be a good one. Well it has some flaws – some of the land that is used to raise cattle in some areas is not exactly prime agricultural land anyway. In other areas it is and that would be a saving.

However, we are not. We are still an expanding population on the edge of limits (in that about 20 thousand people a year die from malnutrition and starvation). At the current time we are destroying lots of forest annually to plant or raise food. If we get more efficient it just means that the population can grow a bit more, and that is just what will happen. So any excuse we can find to take land out of farming and keep it as natural forest directly conserves land and keeps it as habitat period. The modifications you suggest does nothing to conserve land and just lets the population grow faster. For your argument to work you have to start with a stable population which we do not have.

Farming has done way more damage to wildlife in terms of habitat destruction than was ever done by hunters, including all the extinctions hunters caused.

Jason I understood your argument the first time and were we a stable population it would be a good one.

It’s true regardless of population. Whatever the population, it takes far less farmland to feed that population if it is vegetarian than if it is meat-eating. So far more land will need to be devoted to what you call “monoculture farm, treated with herbicides and pesticides” if we eat meat than if we don’t. If we became a nation of vegetarians (or vegans), approximately HALF of all the farmland currently in use would no longer be necessary. The idea that we would create additional farmland from wildlands currently used for hunting is simply not credible. There would be absolutely no economic incentive to do so. We would also save huge amounts of water and huge amounts of energy if we stopped eating meat, or even just significantly reduced our level of meat consumption.

Same here. That’s what’s so priceless about Huckabee — his name really is synonymous with “rube”.

Oh. :-)

jcr, do you really think it’s gun ownership that prevents our government from becoming despotic? If that were true, the UK would be a totalitarian fascist state by now. Last I looked, the fact that we can buy guns hasn’t stopped the Bush Administration from stepping on more of our civil liberties than any previous administration has done.

In Saddam’s Iraq, every man who considered himself one had a Kalashnikov.

Does the phrase “Warsaw Ghetto” mean anything to you?

Oh yes. The uprising was doomed because Stalin just watched it from the other side of the Vistula. Short of nukes and some system to deliver them, nothing would have helped in that situation.

A gun is a vital item for emergency preparedness

…and then you go on to explain why a bulletproof vest would make a lot more sense. Have you never considered that the other guy might draw faster???

Even still we’ve all heard the believe that heaven is where you get everything you like, haven’t we? You childhood home (if it was a happy place) is restored and you get to read books that are as familiar as old favorites but infinitely rewarding and ever-lasting.

No, over here in Old Europe I had never heard of such a materialistic version of heaven, and I can get you plenty of practicing Christians who’d feel very embarrassed about the huckabee’s theology.

I want to live in the country where hunters only kill wild animals to feed their hungry families, everyone’s aim is true, and no beer is drunk on hunting expeditions.

Where is that exactly?

Not in Austria, where hunters’ consumption of distilled beverages is legendary…

Same here. That’s what’s so priceless about Huckabee — his name really is synonymous with “rube”.

Oh. :-)

jcr, do you really think it’s gun ownership that prevents our government from becoming despotic? If that were true, the UK would be a totalitarian fascist state by now. Last I looked, the fact that we can buy guns hasn’t stopped the Bush Administration from stepping on more of our civil liberties than any previous administration has done.

In Saddam’s Iraq, every man who considered himself one had a Kalashnikov.

Does the phrase “Warsaw Ghetto” mean anything to you?

Oh yes. The uprising was doomed because Stalin just watched it from the other side of the Vistula. Short of nukes and some system to deliver them, nothing would have helped in that situation.

A gun is a vital item for emergency preparedness

…and then you go on to explain why a bulletproof vest would make a lot more sense. Have you never considered that the other guy might draw faster???

Even still we’ve all heard the believe that heaven is where you get everything you like, haven’t we? You childhood home (if it was a happy place) is restored and you get to read books that are as familiar as old favorites but infinitely rewarding and ever-lasting.

No, over here in Old Europe I had never heard of such a materialistic version of heaven, and I can get you plenty of practicing Christians who’d feel very embarrassed about the huckabee’s theology.

I want to live in the country where hunters only kill wild animals to feed their hungry families, everyone’s aim is true, and no beer is drunk on hunting expeditions.

Where is that exactly?

Not in Austria, where hunters’ consumption of distilled beverages is legendary…

We are still an expanding population on the edge of limits (in that about 20 thousand people a year die from malnutrition and starvation).

We are “on the edge of limits” in several ways, but the simple availability of food is not one (…at least it won’t be before Peak Oil). It’s all a matter of distribution, of politics, of the fact that the hungry don’t have money. As Jean Ziegler said before the UN: “Every child that starves today is being murdered.”

We are still an expanding population on the edge of limits (in that about 20 thousand people a year die from malnutrition and starvation).

We are “on the edge of limits” in several ways, but the simple availability of food is not one (…at least it won’t be before Peak Oil). It’s all a matter of distribution, of politics, of the fact that the hungry don’t have money. As Jean Ziegler said before the UN: “Every child that starves today is being murdered.”

Jason we seem to be on completely different wavelenghts. I am saying that in this day and age, I support hunting because it is helping conserve land.

You say this all we need to do is become vegetarians and the world will be saved. Well I have news for you. People will not all become vegetarians and in the meantime hunters are helping create a demand for wild-life habitat so I shall continue to suport their rights to hunt.

Well guys I think we have done it – well over 200 responses to duck hunting which puts it at about the same level as circumcision. Maybe PZ should do a post that includes hunting curcumsized ducks. You never know but maybe:
(duckhunting) + (curcumcision) = second coming. Makes as much sense as: Faith = (Mind) + (Heart)+ (Will)

assuming, of course that at least part of the agriculture is for feeding domesticated meat.

It’s not an “assumption,” it’s a fact. More than half the cropland in the U.S. is used to feed livestock, not people. Raising meat is an incredibly inefficient and environmentally harmful form of food production. See my earlier posts for more details.

what if I was raising cats for food, that fed on the mice that were eating the agricultural crops?

Jason we seem to be on completely different wavelenghts. I am saying that in this day and age, I support hunting because it is helping conserve land.

But it’s not. You claimed that if we became a nation of vegans and hunting disappeared then wildlands currently used for hunting would be converted into “monoculture farm, treated with herbicides and pesticides.” That claim is nonsense for the reasons I have explained. If we became a nation of vegans we’d have less farmland, not more, because most of the land currently devoted to growing crops to feed livestock would no longer be farmed. We’d also free up vast areas of land currently used for grazing, and save vast amounts of water, energy and other resources.

You say this all we need to do is become vegetarians and the world will be saved.

Er, no I didn’t say anything about “saving the world.” Is it really so hard for you to respond to what I actually write, rather attributing to me beliefs and statements I have never expressed and responding to those made-up statements instead?

People will not all become vegetarians

Not in the short-term, but over a longer period of time I expect vegetarianism to increase dramatically, and that even people who continue to eat meat will likely reduce the amount of meat they consume. But, yeah, it’s a long-term process, like the decline of religion.

“…matching your wits not against the animal but against nature’s power to sharpen a creature’s senses and instincts for surviving on its home turf.”

I think I’d have more respect for hunters if they used just a knife to take down their prey. Where’s the challenge in buying everything you need to completely hide yourself from an animal and then dispatching it with a rifle and scope?

you really can’t distinguish general statistics from specific applications?

look, it’s not like we haven’t seen you do ALL of this before, and realized you are incapable of rational argument on this subject all the previous times you have raised it.
At this point, all you do is continue to make yourself an excellent target for ridicule.

you have never convinced anybody of the value of your arguments.

do you know why?

because all of us who post here ALREADY know the standard conversion measures of vegetable->meat (IIRC, most of us learned that in middle school even), and can easily enough do the math in our heads to figure out what you spend post after post after post trying to yell at us, as if we were morons like yourself.

YES, obviously it is less efficient, overall, to promote agriculture only for the purpose of producing feed for domesticated animals.

NO, this is not a general practice everywhere in the world, and some of the most efficient, sustainable, farming practices actually include not one but TWO types of animals in the process, which is why I suggested you get off your onion-fed ass and actually look at some of what the peace corps has been doing to promote sustainable farming for decades now.

face it, you are just a hypersensitive veggie (not vegan) fanatic, and your continuous rants on the subject are not only misplaced, but make you look entirely silly.

The article you link to describes a case in which a “professional hunting contractor” is to be used in a particular habitat to remove a particular non-native animal species that was introduced by ranchers in the pioneer era and that has caused great harm to the island’s ecosystem. And it appears the hunt is to be used only because it is not feasible to relocate the invasive animals or eliminate them through contraception. This is obviously not hunting for sport or recreation, and it does not appear to be open to ordinary hunters.

you really can’t distinguish general statistics from specific applications?

Gibberish. You haven’t produced any “statistics.” You made your false “assuming” claim in response to a statement about U.S. farmland in total, not about a particular “area” of it. You’ll tend to make this kind of error when you blunder into the middle of a discussion without taking the time to read the posts you’re responding to. You seem to do that a lot.

because all of us who post here ALREADY know the standard conversion measures of vegetable->meat

You’re just determined to dig yourself deeper into that hole, aren’t you. What the hell is “the standard conversion measures of vegetable->meat” supposed to mean, and how have determined that “all of [you] who post here” know them? Your statements are just becoming less and less meaningful.

YES, obviously it is less efficient, overall, to promote agriculture only for the purpose of producing feed for domesticated animals.

Well done, you finally got something right. Or almost right, anyway. It’s not the “promotion” of agriculture for livestock feed that’s less efficient, it’s the USE of agriculture for that purpose.

some of the most efficient, sustainable, farming practices actually include not one but TWO types of animals in the process,

Really? What farming practises would those be? Produce your evidence.

which is why I suggested you get off your onion-fed ass

I suggest you get up off your fat ignorant lazy ass and try learning something about the topic you’re spouting off about, before you make an even bigger fool of yourself than you already have.

This is obviously not hunting for sport or recreation, and it does not appear to be open to ordinary hunters.

perhaps you should look at more than just that link (there are plenty of updates), or perhaps research what a “hunting contractor” is.

*hint* A hunting contractor gets paid by hunters to find good spots for hunting. the Nature conservancy contacted this contractor to help set up the organized hunts.

surely the reason those hunters all paid to be able to shoot the feral pigs is simply because they all hate hunting so much, right?

LOL

btw, they do the same thing on Catalina Island too, or didn’t you know that either?

heck, you might even want to spend a few minutes of your time to check out the literally THOUSANDS of similar hunting programs used in conjunction with species/habitat preservation programs around the globe.

all those hunters, slaughtering wildlife purely for the benefit of all wildlife, everywhere.

again…

LOL

your arguments for no hunting/no meat are little better than the same kinds of arguments posed by the creationists.

First sentences:
Environmentalists should support hunters. Sound paradoxical? Not really, when you consider that in many states hunting clubs preserve more natural habitat than do most environmental organizations. Although their agenda may be directed toward management for deer, quail, ducks, or other game species, their role in protecting habitats has become increasingly important. Some hunting clubs are exemplary models of private ownership of land contributing to the preservation of natural habitats.

Preserving natural habitat is critical for all wildlife, not just game species. The major threat to most natural ecosystems and wildlife species today is habitat degradation and destruction.

Sorry, but you’re doing another bait-and-switch. The opinion piece you link to asserts that “the hunting community” helps preserve wildlands by speaking out in favor of preservation efforts, and helping to fund them through hunting licenses and fees.

This is a completely different claim from the one you have been making above, which is that if we became a nation of vegans and hunting died out, wildlands currently used for hunting would be converted into “monoculture” farmland. I have explained to you at length why that claim is false. I’ll address your new claim shortly.

“have you ever looked at the Peace Corps projects that involve sustainable farming practices in South America?
funny, but they include pigs.”

Yeah pigs are good. They are pretty damn filthy and love to make mud puddles, but they will eat almost any old junk, especially food scraps, they convert any bit of ground into a muddy state that, with very little work, will make a good garden the following year. They grow to eating size in a few months so you don’t have to over-winter them.

Sorry, but you’re doing another bait-and-switch. The opinion piece you link to asserts that “the hunting community” helps preserve wildlands by speaking out in favor of preservation efforts, and helping to fund them through hunting licenses and fees.

This is a completely different claim from the one you have been making above, which is that if we became a nation of vegans and hunting died out, wildlands currently used for hunting would be converted into “monoculture” farmland. I have explained to you at length why that claim is false. I’ll address your new claim shortly.

Jason go back to my first post – my claim was and is that hunting helps preserve land. A couple of posts ago you said “not it does not” I have given you the evidence that it did.

My statment: if we became a nation of vegans and hunting died out, wildlands currently used for hunting would be converted into “monoculture” farmland. Is perhaps too narrow – I should have said or strip malls or casinos. But that is secondary. Hunters help conserve land. Get rid of hunters you get rid of pressure to conserve land and therefore less land will be conserved. That is it. We don’t need to go anywhere else particularly to your favorite comparisons of farming beef vs broccoli.

Jason go back to my first post – my claim was and is that hunting helps preserve land.

This is what you said. It’s a direct quote:

So we go and become vegans the the rest of the winlderness that is now hunting territory becomes monoculture farm, treated with herbicides and pesticides.
My argument for hunting it is that on the demand side hunters ensure we keep some wild land.

You explicitly asserted that hunting preserves wildland that would otherwise become “monoculture” farmland if we were to “become vegans” and hunting died out. That claim is nonsense, as I have explained. If we became vegans, around half of the farmland we have today would no longer be needed and would most likely revert to wilderness. There is absolutely no basis for the claim that the existence of hunting preserves as wilderness land that would otherwise be used to grow crops.

Your new claim is that hunting preserves wildlands through the lobbying and funding of preservation efforts by hunters. You offer no evidence whatsoever for this claim (an opinion piece by a defender of hunting is not evidence), no studies of how hunting fee revenues are spent, or whether they even cover the administrative costs of managing public lands for hunting. An assertion is not evidence.

The only kind of wildlife management I suspect most hunters seriously care about is maintaining enough prey animals in hunting territories for them to have a reasonable chance of being able to find and kill one. I’ve never seen a shred of evidence that hunters as a group are concerned about the preservation of wild habitats or endangered species, except as it may serve their desire to keep hunting.

Get rid of hunters you get rid of pressure to conserve land and therefore less land will be conserved. That is it.

This assertion is contradicted by the historical record. Hunting has long been in decline, and over the same period the amount of protected land has increased. The area of protected land in North America tripled over the past two decades, primarily through the creation of new protected wilderness areas [source]. So the pattern has been: hunting goes down, protected land goes up. There may or may not be some kind of causal link between the two changes, but it’s clear that your claim that less hunting leads to less wilderness is false, just like your claim about the link between meat-eating and farmland.

Once I took part in what could be called a “lobster hunt” in the Florida Keys. I do not like seafood, and so was along merely to gaze at the underwater wonders, and also to look for bugs for my friends to eat. I have to admit that I became quite obsessed with finding and capturing those little arthropods, enjoying the stalking and capture, even though I was well aware that I was not going to take part in eating them.
Am I a horrible person?
Should I have refused to capture lobster, since I was not to consume them?
I also delight in finding my keys after I have misplaced them, should I feel terrible about not asking my keys’s feelings regarding their discovery?

People are animals. We enjoy things for complicated eveloutionary and neurological reasons. I think that this case (hunting deer and such) is a great demonstration of the simple fact of our complexity. Some folks like to hunt, for the sake of stalking and killing. This is perfectly normal. Some folks stalk and kill wild morels every year, including some for whom the practice is about the stalk, as they don’t fancy morels.
Humans enjoy solving the sorts of puzzles that hunting exemplifies, and denying that strong part of our DNA denies part of what makes us human, ironically, the animal part.

“So, are these ducks very very good moral ducks who went to heaven? Are they immortal ducks who remain alive after being shot? Or are these mere duck-like simulacra that God created for the pleasure of Huckabee and the other hunters? The theological implications are staggering.”

No, they’re bad, immoral ducks who are being punished for their Earthly sins.

“sailor,
Jason go back to my first post – my claim was and is that hunting helps preserve land.
This is what you said. It’s a direct quote:”

No Jason that was not my first post – that was just my first post to you.

Now, you are arguing that hunting has gone down while conserved land has gone up thus hunters do not help with conservation. This is pure coincidence. Ban hunting today, you get rid of all (or see seriously curtail) each state’s fish and wildlife departments and their help in protecting land

You have to distinguish between land that is in conservation and land that is undeveloped. Conserved land is only a small proportion of undeveloped land, and while we may be putting more land in conservation, we are farming and developing the shit out of the planet. I cannot find recent figures but here is an example from a few years back:
“Sprawl is claiming farmland at the rate of 1.2 million acres a year. Throw in forest and other undeveloped land and, for net annual loss of open space (nationwide), you’re waving good-bye to more than two million acres.” Urban Sprawl, National Geographic, July 2001″ Go on line and you will find out how many acres of forest the world is loosing each year.
So increasing acreages of conserved land is a good sign – it means a few people are paying attention and trying to do something about it, it does not mean we are getting more undeveloped land. I strongly suspect the increase in conserved land is because people are beginning to see so much disappear they want to do something before it is all gone. There is a big conservation effort where I am staying now – quite a few thousand acres of private land being conserved together in a block. Ten years ago the idea of conserving this land would have been ridiculous – because it was not threatened.
So the increase in land conservation probably has more to do with land under threat of development than anything else.

My claim is that hunters, by having in an interest in conserved land, actively help with conservation, by acting as a pressure group to support it. Furthermore, the money they pay to hunt helps finance things like fish and wildlife state departments that also work for conservation, and even in some cases game parks. Below a few links which will show where hunters are either involved in, helpful to, or part of conservations efforts.

I have no problem with someone going out to kill a stag in order to get a bite to eat. It’s when I see the likes of fox hunters over here tearing down on their tiny prey with packs of hounds, tearing it to pieces and rubbing blood over the gleeful hunt ‘virgins’ that my blood starts to boil. Makes me wish there were an afterlife and that those retards would spend an eternity on the other end of the hunt. Tell me how ‘noble’ and ‘traditional’ it is then, f*ckers.

Serious idea though. Allow pack hunting as above but on one condition. You only allow humans to be hunted and it has to be a member of the hunt drawn at random beforehand. Get rid of ’em one by one.